Letters: Apr. 21, 1967

Give a Man a Horse . ..

Sir: Give it to me straight. Does the horse on your April 14 cover have a chance in '68? Otherwise, the situation remains perceptibly unchanged. I've had to choose between jackasses before.

R. BARNHILL St. Louis

Sir: "The Temper of the Times" was good until the last sentence, which was ridiculous. Just why is it reassuring to look forward to an unchanged situation no matter who wins? The purpose of a presidential election is not to provide a meaningless choice between two moderates but to give the electorate an opportunity to discard policies with which it is fed up.

MILES J. BREIT Brooklyn

Sir: You omitted the one Republican who has a chance of beating Johnson—Mark Hatfield of Oregon. Unlike such me-too supporters of the war as Romney, Rockefeller, Reagan and Nixon, Hatfield offers a real choice—he wants to end the war by stopping the bombing and seeking peace. The ticket is Hatfield-Lindsay. But it could never get the nomination from the present conservative G.O.P. organization.

W. BRUCE DEAN Seekonk, Mass.

Sir: In your otherwise excellent report, you neglected to mention a courageous, popular, respected public servant, a logical choice for the G.O.P. nomination: Henry Cabot Lodge.

DANIEL J. JOHNSON Elsmere, N.Y.

Life on the Other Side

Sir: Your story on East Germany [April 7] is to the point both in fact and judgment. Unfortunately, however, the contrast to West Germany is no longer "invariably an unfavorable one," as is most remarkably demonstrated by the much superior East German school system, which ranks among the best in the world—despite the obvious flaws in teaching humanities. As a matter of fairness towards our most "beloved enemy," this genuine achievement should not be ridiculed as a mere all-out effort of propagandist indoctrination.

F. W. APPOLDT Munich

Systems Analysis

Sir: In our search for truth regarding the Apollo disaster [April 14], our governmental investigations should reach beyond the Apollo program per se to encompass the total space-program context in which Apollo has been cast.

In 1962, working in the military space program, I presumed to suggest, in an unclassified thesis on file with the Air University Library at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Ala., that in terms of personal safety and national economy, the U.S. could ill afford the luxury of two independent and jealously self-preoccupied national organizations for the development of national space programs, one military (the Air Force Systems Command) and one civilian (NASA), with the gigantic national industrial complex shifting as best it could between them. There should be a single program, with military and civilian correlatives and applications. This thesis was looked upon by many as heretical. But this program duplication, which perhaps constituted merely a lavish logistical travesty in 1962, may have materially contributed to a loss of lives in 1967.

JOHN B. CHICKERING Lieut. Colonel, U.S.A.F. (ret.) Arlington, Va.

Two-edged Sword?